Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
To go beyond the understatement of "bad idea" (and likely make the subtext into text): This thing is unmistakable malice, not mere incompetence.
There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.
There's a voted-into-oblivion reply to this from someone trying to both-sides things "I don't want to hear about it when it was changed quickly for Covid too".
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
You'd be surprised what hate is capable of. Once you paint a side as the enemy and convince half of the population of that, it becomes easy to carryout acts even if they're detrimental to the your side too. Look at the US economy and inflation caused by the tariffs and wars for instance. It's the 'our side is winning' mentality shortsightedness that destroys nations and institutions. By the time people realize this, it's often too late.
After hanging out on Trumper forums to try and understand their point of view, I realized that they have a VERY narrow view of who they want in their "ideal democracy": Pure White Conservative Christians, No browns or blacks, No voting women (their place is in the home and the kitchen), No gays, Must love guns, must support everything that their GEOTUS says even if he contradicts himself.
"Abhors democracy" isn't necessarily the right phrase for the on-the-ground majority. The leadership, sure. But not the average folk.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
Ever so slightly, definitely not as bad as the senate.
I'm all for doubling the size of the house, but that's more to combat gerrymandering. The larger the size of the house, the harder and less impactful it is to gerrymander. Though before that I'd definitely push for federal anti-gerrymandering legislation.
There's a sizable part of the group that truly believe that cities get more representation than they do, that there are more rural Americans than urban.
It's strange though, because Trump's elderly voters are the ones who vote by mail. Some observers say he would have won the incredibly close 2020 race if he hadn't discouraged mail in voting.
I did hear a lot of people claim this, and it seemed mostly like unqualified schadenfreude and fantasy.
In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.
"I can't believe Obama did this to us while we were in the middle of fighting Joe Bidens war in Iran! It's almost as bad as Bill Clinton's darn Tariffs!" - Future Trump, probably
it's not a "bad idea", it's intentionally disruptive -- that's the point of it
not surprised that Trump Admin is trying to do this; it's a page out of their play dirty, break the law now and sort it out later once the courts catch up, approach to politics
but the fact that SCOTUS didn't shut it down is beyond the pale -- unconscionable
If you genuinely don't understand what's happening - it's the same reason that political discussion on Reddit became completely detached from reality. On these sort of topics you have a relatively small number of hyper partisans that aim to censor discussion through the abuse of flagging, and they're mostly successful. So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world, or even on e.g. Hacker News. I'm not really sure why anybody would want this outcome; I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
Everything you're saying can be true and co-exist with the reality, which is the current administration has been so vindictive, short-sighted, and nakedly serving the billionaire class, that its own supporters have had to completely disengage with everything The Executive Branch is doing.
If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.
You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.
There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.
"If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on."
Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.
I think GP is right: this place has become an echo chamber. Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal, it would not be seriously considered, or worse, flagged. And why would anyone waste their time when they know their efforts will be immediately dismissed and memory holed?
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
> It reads as the exact sort of evidence free misinformation driven conspiratorial sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about.
It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.
We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.
* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors
* Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence
* Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom
* Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election
* Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution
Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about accurate elections, believe them.
It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?
You certainly already know what you're doing or you wouldn't have added your joke disclaimer. Here [1] is a clip of Trump "alluding to a third presidential term." You 'not knowing' he's joking has nothing to do with not having a sense of humor, as any human alive would know he's joking. So your rather wild conspiracies are based on jokes and a very broad extrapolation from 2020.
So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence. Of course this is the contemporary state of political discourse and so I'm not at all implying there's anything particularly egregious about you in particular. This sort of stuff is ubiquitous, and I think echo chambers are a big part of the reason why. Who cares about making viable or relevant comments when it's largely just a mixture of a signaling circle jerk paired alongside bias confirmation.
On the contrary, I know that he's not joking. He doesn't think he's joking. This isn't a one-off comment: he's selling hats about running in 2028. He wasn't joking about "building the wall," about mass deportations, about tear-gassing peaceful protesters [1], or about trying to steal the 2020 election. Every time his supporters downplay his ridiculous rhetoric as "trolling," he doubles down. Trump's followers certainly think he's serious about running again, including Steve Bannon. When has he ever admitted to joking?
> So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence.
I've given you evidence of Trump being utterly serious in his utterly ridiculous claims and plenty of historical evidence of contempt for elections in my previous comment, which you have failed to address. So I don't take your accusation of "claimed unsupported by evidence" to be accurate.
When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness, but quite often explicitly as well. He knows that part will get snipped out by partisans which makes them look even more absurd. In the context I linked above he says, "I'm only kidding" literally immediately following his joke about a third term.
You haven't given any evidence. You've instead spread misinformation, relied heavily on broad sweeping assertions based primarily on such, and then combined that all into elaborate conspiracy theories. And then you complain about the quality of others' posts.
Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.
You are perfectly demonstrating the lack of engagement I was referring to. You would have to ignore the entire history of his political career to think he is doing anything other than testing the waters here.
Furthermore, he has done more than a single joke about this. Over multiple interviews, he has laid out specific methods he could use to functionally seek a third term, including running as a VP to Vance and forcing him aside. Is it really a joke if you're talking about it over dozens of rallies and interviews, and how you would seriously do it?
Will it materialize in anything? He is so fickle and unfocused that he will float every possibility under the sun and then go with his gut. It depends more on how his base reacts
I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen and that his extreme actions were a response to that. I also think he enjoys trolling the media, probably in part because its his personality but also probably because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism. By overtly feeding the media stuff that he knows will be taken out of context, he lets them destroy themselves. When the media run sensationalist stories framing jokes as legitimate positions, they make partisans rejoice, but they make everybody else look at the lot of the partisans and media alike and mostly just laugh. There's a reason confidence in the media is now in the 20s. 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.
You're also, probably unintentionally, spreading misinformation here. Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside. Rather, a journalist proposed that scenario (though it was "passing the baton" rather than forcing him out) and he said 'yeah that's one way [to have a third term]'. You can see the media tiptoe around this slightly inconvenient fact when running their stories. For instance here's [1] AP recently talking about third term stuff where they state "[Trump] acknowledged that one method was to be the running mate to Vice President JD Vance in 2028 — then have Vance step aside if the pair won."
That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources, is that Trump proposed it. Exactly like you're doing here. They feed you misinformation, you repeat it, and then believe other people who don't believe the same are themselves misinformed, because why would 'your' media lie to you. And that's a good question actually - it's not like there aren't endless completely genuine problems with Trump. The war with Iran is about as popular as AIDS, but for some reason the media didn't milk it anywhere near as much as they could have. How odd.
In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion. Once again echo chambers are just so dumb, for everybody.
The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
> Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too,
I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?
> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.
There are currently 20 root level comments. 8 have been flagged. Which is again starting to look a lot like Reddit.
Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that would much more closely resemble what we see in things like support polls.
But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.
If the quality comments that have been flagged are like what you see on /r/conservative , it might be that you subjectively see quality where others see something else.
Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?
You don't get it, or are not following through. The thread started with why a Conservative wouldn't post here. It's simple, it's not worth getting comments downvoted or flagged for having an unpopular opinion [not nationally but here].
You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.
I can assure you plenty of conservative views get shared on HN, all the time. Saying otherwise means you must not be on here much.
It's just that defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith that people on all sides of the political spectrum are sick of hearing. To imply it's only hardcore liberals flagging these comments is wishful thinking
You should have seen how it was after most Americans could no longer deny the Nixon Malfeasance.
People started getting embarrassed real fast and even before he rode off into the sunset it was not easy to find somebody who would admit to voting for him.
And he got elected twice himself.
Basically it was so disgraceful that in less than a year you couldn't find anybody who ever admitted to voting for Nixon at all. Most voting Republicans actually had, at least the first time, but if anybody even indicated their tendency after that they were ridiculed by other Republicans like "how could you ever support such a crook?", not just from the Democrats. It was just too uncomfortable for a nation of overwhelmingly honest-to-the-bone Americans regardless of which party, nature took its course almost immediately and it was swept under the rug as completely as could be. Not everybody is honest to the bone of course, what you would sometimes hear instead of crickets was "No, I actually didn't vote that time" from some Republicans who still had the bumper sticker that said "Nixon's the One."
It was very much like a mass "suspension of disbelief" for at least a decade after which people acted something like "it was only the very elderly and uninformed who voted for Nixon and they're all dead now so no wonder you can't find someone who was proud to vote for him either time."
The primary motivation for Rupert Murdoch's creation of Fox News was to prevent the Republican party from ever suffering an embarrassing resignation like Nixon again.
Present the Republican base with an alternate reality where every accusation against a Republican is a witch hunt, no matter its veracity, and the base no longer has to feel ashamed supporting a crook. Instead, they can stand proud, knowing they support someone the "libs" hate.
Unlike the times Republican presidents have said it, this is truly a case of Mission Accomplished.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.
For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."
One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.
> it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit.
But yet here you are.
> There is no room for discourse or nuance.
Try me!
> If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
On the contrary, there have been endless articles and discussion about Trump supporters' opinions, to the extent that "New York Times Interviews Twelve Trump Supporters" [1] [2] is a bit of a cliche. I think that your (collective) thoughts have been well expressed and understood by the other side, it's just that most people find those opinions unimpressive, mostly couched in a sort of hero-worship credulity or open hostility to people who are different from you.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Sure, public opinion shifts. For example, Republicans used to be the party of limited government and law-and-order. Then they elected a felon who flagrantly violates the Constitution (14th amendment, separation of powers, emoluments clause, etc) and has worked tirelessly to extend the power of the federal government, in the present case to intervene in the Constitutionally-mandated state right of operating elections. Of course "people used to feel differently" is not, on its own, an argument in support for the administration's policies, so I hope you can do better.
> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
1 was not yet flagged at the time that I wrote that. Nevertheless, you can reconstruct what was written from the quotes in its responses.
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Basically, the comment asserted that Democrats are "pushing" for mail-in ballots, despite the fact that many Republican-controlled states (notably Mississippi, which recently defended its mail-in voting law) also allow mail-in voting. The comment cast aspersions on the accuracy of mail-in voting, citing no evidence. The comment was apparently informed solely by partisan bias without any basis in the reality of the situation.
In short, it was not a good comment. Did it deserve to be flagged? Probably not. But it was certainly not a thoughtful, well-reasoned defense of the current administration's flagrantly illegal overreach. If this is the kind of comment that you want to see more of on HN, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
It's clearly a nuanced topic that requires debate in good-faith, no?
So why is it flagged and not debated? If all counter points are flagged, then there is no discourse. The only discourse is all the people who agree with each other.
How does that contradict my point? 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID and would be disenfranchised by Republican voter ID laws. Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.
Don't tell me I'm "unfactual" while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.
Yes - USPS should behave like a layer 3 network: moving mail pieces to destination addresses independent of source & destination.
Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.
In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service
to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all
voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requiring USPS to use those
lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters.
USPS officials were tasked with crafting the details of how the new system
would work, including the creation of a new portal for states to upload their
voters’ information and the back-end software that would allow mail delivery
sites and local post offices to track, and potentially block, ballots
entering into the mail on their way to voters.
The whistleblower is saying the rules are crafted so certain people don't get counted. Specifically, minorities, specifically, democrat minorities.
> The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states.
Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Their job is whatever the government tells them it is, things like this don't just spawn out of thin air, there's usually rationale for it[0].
The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.
It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system
I'm wondering how easy the USPS is to route around.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?
No, the procedures are designed to reject more votes in blue areas, just like the procedures that somehow conclude that people named Williams, John, or Washington should be dropped from the rolls for being similarly named as other people named Williams, John, or Washington.
the procedurse are not designed to reject more votes in blue areas lol being involved at the organization forr 15+ years its always so funny to hear what ppl on this site cook up; i get a good 'what are they saying now on orange site' with my co-workers
Oh, I see, you are posting the same misleading comment on multiple threads here. I'm sure you are doing so in good faith, so here is a link to my other comment explaining why it is misleading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546715
The very sad state of the US democracy, especially how they do elections, was even fodder to a german language book "König von Deutschland" (King of Germany) by Andreas Eschbach.
In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.
That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...
Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!
Given that they are dedicated to causing chaos in the midterms, how is it best countered? Whisper campaigns to tell all your friends to vote in person? When he loses, what stops him from putting troops in the streets? Is the recourse just wait until he goes? We all see what's happening, how do we meet the moment?
> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.
Having bare minimum protections against invalid voters, illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system.
I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted.
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…
Some years ago a postman in Spain was caught with a sack in his home with 3000 votes that never were delivered to their destiny. This happened many months after the election. Last year in December some thieves broke into a small village post office and stole the money and the sack with 124 mail votes that were found later partially burnt. The few voters involved were allowed to re-send his vote before the elections and an organization of 12 people were detained later for this an other assaults to post offices before the local elections.
So yes, mail voting has a few issues still, not a lot, but is not impossible to break. If every worker in the post office is from one party and nobody in that party votes by mail, bribing and corrupting the system is doable, and even easy; specially if your work depends on it.
If you do this in small populations or at scale you could easily remove enough votes from the system until winning the place by one single vote. If you are malignant enough you could even blame later millions of "lazy" people for not voting and laugh about it.
Mail voting depends on trusting what your postman is not a plant.
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID.
Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.
The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.
>Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
False. Every state in the US has a free voter ID option.
Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID. It is not issued automatically. That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements. Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.
> It’s not that uncommon for an adult to not have an ID
It’s extremely uncommon.
You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.
The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.
34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.
The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.
Many who were born before segregation ended in the mid-1960s were not granted birth certificates, as their mothers were forced to use midwives during birth because local hospitals were whites only and turned them away.
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
The comparison to western European countries doesn't hold up. Speaking from Norway: yes, it's true you have to provide ID to vote, both in national and local elections. The difference is that obtaining ID is trivial, to the point where essentially everyone here legally has ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the most common way for someone not to have ID would literally be "all of it was in my luggage and the airline lost it", or some similar very temporary state. In the US, the people who do have ID do not even form a representative sample of the population as far as I understand
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
This is not true. For example not every citizen can vote (people under guardianship or criminals) and not citizens can vote in local elections in the EU, if they came from another EU country.
The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.
Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID.
Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.
A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.
Some of the Republican proposals would require a proof of citizenship at registration time. You would still be able to register without a passport but you need to take your birth or naturalization certificate. Not everyone has them at home so you might need to go to your parents place in another state or risk getting it mailed. Good luck.
The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.
Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.
Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.
> Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID
So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.
> In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.
Nitpick: E.g. Norwegian ID cards can be had by any legal resident. The card will say that you're not a citizen though, so your point about that stands.
Re driving license: Driving license is a valid form of ID for voting here. All eligible people are on the voting rolls automatically (unlike the absurd american system), and the driving license is merely used to prove you are who you say you are.
Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now. 20% of americans don't have them. They're pointless, take a lot of time and effort to aquire and are needlessly expensive.
> Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now.
If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.
In much of Europe you don't need ID for those, except a driving license, which happens to be an ID but primarily exists to prove you are qualified to drive. If you look young you are asked to prove your age if buying cigarettes or alcohol but the requirements for that are relatively low.
Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.
The GOP and Trump supporters have so far spent millions of dollars trying to prove voter fraud. Mike Lindell of my pillow has lost his fortune trying to prove it.
They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.
HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.
And when it all goes to shit, they can just use that as evidence that mail-in voting shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
It’s worth mentioning that destroying the USPS has been a largely bipartisan effort, for reasons I cannot understand.
Edit: when the PAEA passed in 2006, it had 410 “yes” votes. Not a single democrat, and only 20 republicans voted no. This was, and still is, the primary reason the USPS is no longer able to function.
That's the crazy thing about the US. Our postal service is, for some reason, not funded by taxpayer dollars, but also not allowed to run a profit, they are not allowed to change prices without congressional approval, and they must fund their pension for 75 years - well beyond any requirement anyone else in the US faces, to include both federal agencies and private orgs. If they didn't have that last requirement, they'd be solvent.
No tax funding, no profit and price controls are normal for a state owned company. In other countries the postal service is not expected to pay for itself all the way but subsidies are limited by law. The prices are supposed to be lower than market as a public service.
These aren’t state-owned companies, they’re federal services. It’s also, as stated, not how it works for any other org or business in the US. Maybe everyone else in the world has some kind of problem similar to this, but it appears to at least be a somewhat unique situation in the US.
It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.
> They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
You're right, the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling this summer reversed the appeals court ruling, preserving states' rights to set laws that permit counting postmarked ballots -- if postmarked in time.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
Exactly. It's incredible how partisan some peoples information bubbles must be to not see this for what it is.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader of a country who dismantled its democracy (Orban) - and previously pushed the govt to make false claims of vote fraud to keep him in power.
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
Then, when that failed:
> Trump pressured the Justice Department to falsely announce it had found election fraud, and he attempted to install a new acting attorney general who had drafted a letter falsely asserting such election fraud had been found, in an attempt to persuade the Georgia legislature to convene and reconsider its Biden electoral votes.
Like I think there are people in such an information bubble that they aren't even aware these are well established facts. Not partisan talking points, but a recounting of facts of the lengths that have already been attempted to remain in power illegally. And now sudden sweeping changes to voting right before an election amid false claims of rigged elections.
Another reason is that if people only have one day to vote, it’s much easier to disenfranchise their vote just by delaying or inconveniencing them. Texas recently tried this by changing where people were allowed to vote, causing mass confusion.
In Georgia they passed a law making it illegal to hand out bottles of water to people in line to vote while simultaneously reducing polling stations in certain areas to ensure long lines.
He’s just demanding the same kind of rigor he demands from Trump about rigged elections. Here you go RickWagoner the Republican Governor of famously liberal Wyoming smells something fishy too: https://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_7f688e37-3...
Surely you agree this is problematic, and oversight is needed?
Then extend that one step farther. It wouldn’t be fair to scrutinize only blue states like New Jersey. Red states like Wyoming should be held accountable too, right?
I think it's amusing how partisan your notion of "rigor" is. Because of a run-of-the-mill software error, you want to take away election power from the states and hand it to the federal government, which at the moment is in the hands of someone who has zero credibility regarding running honest elections?
Moreover, you find these 400 erroneous votes deeply problematic but you, I assume, did not ask for federal election oversight in the following cases:
What I see here is a pattern of attempts to restrict voting among those opposed to the GOP. And these are the people that you trust to provide "rigor" in voting?
They do exist. What's interesting is that those are problems created by the same people who are currently trying to disenfranchise people through the current push to takeover state elections through the postal service. So color me skeptical of their alleged "good intentions."
You wrote: “They ( problems in elections ) do exist. What's interesting is that those are problems created by the same people who are currently trying to disenfranchise people…”
Under discussion was the New Jersey ineligible voter problem, to which you responded with problems in perceived over zealous voter restrictions.
Clearly, not all the problems are caused by Republicans. There’s room for examination and correction in more than one place.
You are (intentionally) disregarding the question of intent. The NJ issue was a software bug. It was found and fixed. No amount of big government oversight will prevent bugs, and in fact it may increase them.
In contrast, the disenfranchisement in Georgia, Tennessee, and now proposed through the USPS,is fully intentional. Republican don't want legal voters to vote.
So you would like to see a real source of the stated/recorded democracy subversion goal of the GOP? If they didnt state it, its fake news?
Until then, all the past events, from court packing, gerry-mandering to now mail-in ballots (etc pp) is just coincidence?
When trump says "we only need to win once" and then conducts blantant corruption and demolishes institutions/relationships, you think this is just one more isolated coincindence? You think he will leave the white house easily and face the charges, even though his ball room isnt done?
Another commenter noted, how many people seem to live in absolute disinformation bubbles, in your case, i would add "state of insane denial".
You're replying to someone's personal interpretation and opinion asking about a source? That is the source. Do you not understand how discussions work?
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
> politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
Agreed, if id becomes madatory for voting then an appropriate id needs to be provided for free, otherwise it is effectively a poll tax, and poll taxes are illegal.
No, they do not. Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee, as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent, and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee. You take this process for granted because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle, especially when it offers no immediate tangible benefit in their daily lives.
If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. The fact that they don't support mandatory ID shows their real agenda: they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
>Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee,
False, there are no fees for voter IDs. Please find a state where you believe this is true.
>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent
Not always.
>and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee.
False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
>You take this process for granted
I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
>because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle,
Nice soft bigotry of low expectations. You're so privileged that you actually believe this objectively false propaganda. The fact that you've repeated it to multiple times to virtue signal which may dissuade people to vote is a luxury belief [0]. Who believes luxury beliefs? Privileged peopled.
>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID.
They do.
>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID
False, they do support free IDs.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Okay, we're at that level of argument, I see. Well, you forgot to bring your evidence. A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
>>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent
> Not always.
Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
> False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote. If you're trying to convince me that getting an ID is free and easy, you'll need to explain first why everyone who needs such an ID doesn't already have one.[1]
> I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
> virtue signal
Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice. To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)? Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice for its own sake is completely foreign to your own morality.
>>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID.
>They do.
Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans. [2]
>>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID
>False, they do support free IDs.
That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters? Just a few recent examples:
I absolutely agree with this statement. Somebody should tell Donald Trump (and his rabid followers), who despite your exhortation insists on lying about election fraud.
>Okay, we're at that level of argument, I see. Well, you forgot to bring your evidence.
So did you.
>A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
>Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
>Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote.
It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
The US has this via the states, not federally.
>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice.
You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
>To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)?
Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
>Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice
You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
>Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans.
Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
>That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
>Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters?
Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Did you not see the links to factual evidence that I included?
> This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
> Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
> It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government. Only the US sets up these additional obstacles. Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
>>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
> The US has this via the states, not federally.
Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
>>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice.
> You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
What about "making sure that eligible voters and vote" is not about justice?
> Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
Not an answer to my question.
> You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
You already said that, but you are just making baseless accusations. You don't know my mind. Let me ask you this: do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake? Were MLK Jr, Ghandi, the Sufragettes, the abolitoinists all just "virtue signalling", or do you think that some people actually care about making the world a better place?
It's really hard to take your argument seriously when doubt the good faith of arguments made with support facts that help people and support democracy. Clearly no one in the MAGA camp could be accused of "virtue signalling" because they have no virtues. On the contrary, MAGA members publicly signal their devotion to groupthink by willfully blocking out unpleasant facts and pledging fealty to a prodigious liar.
> Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
> That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically. I challenge you to find any evidence supporting the idea that any state automatically issues ID.
> Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue. You have failed to address the many examples of disenfranchisement at the hands of the GOP.
My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a terrible debater who consistently disregards evidence and arguments presented by the opponent, or you are debating in bad faith and intentionally ignoring evidence that disagrees with your preconceived conclusion. Which is it?
>Did you not see the links to factual evidence that I included?
You did not link to any factual evidence that made any claim contrary to the facts: Every state has free voter IDs. This is a fact.
>Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant. Millions of people get free voter IDs, they're not irrelevant. This is a fact you just admitted to, which was my original claim. I accept your defeat.
>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
"I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
>That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
To acquire the machine-readable version of the card, a citizen must present either a currently valid card (in case of renewals), or a currently valid passport, or a birth certificate and proof of citizenship.[0]
Birth certificate. Sound familiar?
>so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
>Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
>Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
Not every European country has mandatory IDs. Like Europe, every state in the US has free voter IDs. Every single state, you cannot deny this fact.
>Not an answer to my question.
You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
>do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake?
You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
>Clearly no one in the MAGA...
Whataboutism.
>You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
That's not why they blocked the bill.
>Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically.
No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state with an attorney or pay a fee.
I'll say it again, every state in the US has free voter IDs. EVERY state, red and blue.
QED.
>Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue.
Your statement was false, untrue. You finally admitted above that you were wrong.
>My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a terrible debater who consistently disregards evidence
Poor conclusion. Find a single state that does not have free voter IDs.
>intentionally ignoring evidence that disagrees with your preconceived conclusion.
No evidence disagrees with my original statement of fact:
Every US state issues a free voter ID cards. Even Republican strongholds.
> You did not link to any factual evidence that made any claim contrary to the facts: Every state has free voter IDs.
You keep on repeating that. Your brain is hyper-focused on "every state has free voter ID card". Meanwhile you are consistently ignoring the context: 10% of Americans don't have voter ID of any kind. No state issues voter ID automatically. Those Americans will be disenfranchised under a Republican voter ID law. Until you can solve the disenfranchisement issue, voter ID requirement cannot be supported.
> So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant.
Whether or not they cost money is not the point. The point is whether getting them is an obstacle that will disenfranchise legal voters.
> I accept your defeat.
Lol are you literally 13 years old? You definitely act like it.
>>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
> "I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
You didn't actually address my question. I asked "walking distance to what" because that obviously matters. And I didn't say they don't exist, I said that they aren't effective.
> That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
No. In the Czech Republic, they are issued automatically because the government already has your birth certificate. Because IDs there are universal, there is a much lower barrier to entry. You dont know what you are talking about.
> That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
You don't "give it away" and I didn't say that you did. You need to acquire your birth cert, then show it to the DMV. I don't even know why you would even argue this. You're just arguing to be argumentative. Again, you have the mind of a 13 year old.
> That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
Completely irrelevant comparison. In European countries, everyone has voter ID because the IDs are issued automatically, which does not happen in the US.
> You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
You are sad, pathetic person.
> You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
Sad, without morals. Your low estimation of your fellow man reflects the weak state of your own conscience. You assume (falsely) that everyone is as self-interested as you are. I hope you find someone who can show you beauty and kindness in the world.
> That's not why they blocked the bill.
Citation needed.
> No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state with an attorney or pay a fee.
That's not what I said. Stop putting words in my mouth. At the point I can only include that you are intentionally misinterpreting me in order, I don't know, win internet points or just fill up your vacuous life.
Debating someone who is not interested in actually understnading the world but just incessantly repeating themselves like a dying insect is not rewarding for me or educational for you. So please grow up. Until then, I won't continue this conversation.
If they gave a crap about the will of the people then why is marijuana still illegal? When you defy the will of the people 99% of the time, claiming your motivation is the will of the people when it is convenient rings pretty hollow.
We just spent a year hearing from some asshole about how the government was spending too much money and couldn't afford frivolities, yet we're supposed to spend money on security theatre to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist, all because some other assholes are butthurt about losing an election fair and square?
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
> If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
They didn't overlook it. They fixed the error.
If you are asserting that this error was a partisan, intentional attempt to change the outcome of the election, you're going to need to provide a lot more evidence before injecting USPS into election policy makes sense.
I am asserting that errors happened. Invalid votes were cast, thousands more potentially could be cast. Just in one state. What about the rest? Clearly, there is potential for more problem areas.
The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle. Or rather, by the party leaders—- the majority of their voters want voter ID, but the party won’t pursue it!
We can’t just shrug these things off. They are real.
I’d say there is enough to see here that more scrutiny is warranted. It should be bipartisan.
Errors are not fraud. The current push by the Trump administration is (allegedly) about fraud.
> The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle.
It's entertained if you can do it fairly. "Fairly" means everyone gets an ID automatically. Why do Republicans oppose given legal voters ID so that they can vote?
I don’t oppose that. What makes you think all Republicans would?
I want every single voter to have access to their vote, and I want strict proof that every vote cast was the knowledgeable will of that voter ( and only that voter. I’m thinking of ballot dumps at collection boxes here. )
The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
> I don’t oppose that. What makes you think all Republicans would?
Because your elected GOP representatives consistently vote against it, when universally available ID is presented by Democrats as a condition for voter ID laws. Do you have a plausible explanation for why GOP Congressmen would reject that proposal? I sure do.
> Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
First you have to prove that there is a problem to fix. Fraud, as we've covered, has never been shown to be a significant issue, and software bugs, as I noted, are not cured by invasive and illegal USPS tactics. So what in your view could possibly be fixed by this latest move?
It doesn't matter when the guy leading the charge is an actual insurrectionist, who was caught trying to twist the arm of Georgia's governor to throw the election for him. What's even the point of voting if the President is just going to call up the governor and threaten to investigate him if he doesn't get his way? The people pushing this have a massive credibility problem and it's never going to go anywhere until more credible people, like yourself, are writing the bills and making the case you're making here from the Senate floor.
> The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
There's a huge actual distinction between the two in that you can't fix all errors, nor can you prosecute errors (not accounting for negligence). Moreover, every system is going to have some amount of fraud; it's impossible to reduce fraud to zero without increasing costs to infinity. So at some level you have to make a choice between a flawed system and a system that's intractable.
Here's more recent proof that the system is working as intended:
The audit estimated that no more than 0.1% of voter registration records would have allowed someone to vote despite an unverified identity, invalid address, or citizenship-related issue.
So that's what we've talking about really, driving a 0.1% down to some other smaller infinitesimal number which cannot be 0, because even the perfect system would be subject to human errors.
Moreover none of the proposed measures would have prevented that, as you said it was in fact an error.
The reason why this issue is so intractable is because the level of disruption must be measured against the risk of disenfranchisement. People would be happier to implement these unneeded security measures if there was more care by those proposing them to address those ways in which legal legitimate voters would be refused a ballot. And the fact they don't ever address those concerns is the whole tell that the disenfranchisement is the point. Instead it's always bad faith "Oh you want the elections to be unsecure, you're overlooking massive security holes!"
At the end of the day the biggest loudmouth in the world got people so mad about an election that they attacked the government, so then we were forced to spend years going over that election with a fine tooth comb only to turn up zilch. Even the Cyberninjas couldn't find the fraud they alleged when given direct unfettered access to voting records.
And yet, we still have to entertain claims about the boogeyman of voting as if they're in good faith. Prove it in just one court under high standards of evidence! But even the biggest loudmouths saying fraud won't say it under oath in front of a judge, because they don't have the evidence to back it up.
It's far past the point that noncitizens voting in elections should be considered the biggest threat to our democracy. No, the threat is an authoritarian, insurrectionist president trying to corrupt the election process.
The article you’ve provided clearly says Trumps dialogue is not to be taken literally. ( It does say there are other ways the election might be tinkered with, but these are for another discussion. )
I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
> I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
The issue is not the article, but the president's own words. Do you find it concerning that the president has expressed a desire to cancel elections? Or do you think he was joking?
Follow-up question: was/is he joking about building the wall, mass deportations, eliminating birthright citizenship, or running for a third term?
“Source please” … “I don’t like your source” Always with you people. In 2020 he personally called state election officials asking them to find votes /in his own election/ but that doesn’t worry you either. Always bad faith, always.
he is implying that the focus on the republican cases (the survivors) is a red herring because the system is presumably such that an actual conspiracy cannot be detected.
I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
Why don't you start with some research of your own and outline how such a conspiracy would work and how large it would have to be.
Don't throw out a hypothetical "could it even be caught?" to try to bias people without doing any sort of even cursory glance at how things work.
Hell, while you're at it, please outline other possible conspiracies, and think about if there are potential vulnerabilities that could very require less major coordination than mail-in ballots. (Not even including the 'have a president who constantly tells everyone that if he loses it will be due to fraud to stoke the flames in advance' strategy!)
> he is implying that the focus on the republican cases (the survivors) is a red herring because the system is presumably such that an actual conspiracy cannot be detected.
Maybe GP is implying that, but that's not what they said, because what you describe is not survivorship bias.
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
You are asking the wrong question. The correct question is: If mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists? If there isn't evidence that it exists, then the people who claim that it exists are making statements not based on evidence. In other words, their opinions are either not informed by facts, in which case we should disregard their opinions; or their statements are not sincere expressions of belief, in which case they are liars and we should not trust them.
> because what you describe is not survivorship bias
then you should look up what survivorship bias is. the visible group in this scenario are the individuals who were caught. which says nothing about any conspiracies or even other more competent individuals. the sampling is also poor.
> mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists
isn't that obvious? if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape? this example may actually be too on the nose as there is reason to believe exactly this happens with respect to certain state actors while being mitigated by the relative low volume of cash.
> then you should look up what survivorship bias is.
I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were not caught, even though there is no evidence that they exist: in this way the situation is quite different from that of missing planes in war. You ascribe the frauds' invisiblity to a supreme level of sophistification. The problem with that mode of thought is that it allows us to assume anything, including that the sophisticated frauds are actually Republican. So you can't call it survivorship bias until you show that those "invisible frauds" actually exist; you are going backwards by calling it survivorship bias in order to justify your unfounded a priori belief that they do exist.
> if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape?
This argument makes no sense. (a) If it's easy to commit a crime, then it's not necessary to be sophisticated to accomplsh it. (b) Widespread mail-in voter fraud is not easy to accomplish, unlike your hypothetical "trivial counterfeit" example, despite what Donald Trump tells you. (c) If only Republicans are getting caught doing voter fraud, then by your argument, Democrats are smarter, which is.... accurate. (d) You haven't even posited a posisble mechanism by which millions of fraudulent votes could be achieved. Believing things without evidence is called "faith" and is not the basis on which we develop laws.
survivorship bias is a statistical error, why would you invoke planes? especially after saying this:
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
also, you are the one invoking domestic political factions. I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue. it's probably more likely that a state actor is going to be committing the fraud just to saw chaos and to perhaps one day be too obvious about it.
I already told you why planes are relevant. It sounds like you really don't know what survivorship bias is at all. Please read the article [1]. Why are you in such a hurry to a discuss a topic that you don't understand?
Applying survivorship bias to the current "invisible fraud" situation is putting the cart before the horse.
> I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue.
It's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone in most systems, including systems where there is no fraud. Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists, and that bar has not been met. Does that answer your question?
it has been amusing watching you try to pretend that you knew what survivorship bias was. first you assumed it had something to do with death. then you invoked the plane anecdote.
now you link the wikipedia without realizing that over 90% of it has nothing to do with planes.
> Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists.
this is an assertion not an argument. I suppose there is no further point to this discussion.
My brother in Christ, you are projecting so hard it hurts. The comment that I responded to simply said "Survivorship bias" in response to a question about only Republicans getting caught doing voter fraud. Your attempt to theorize fraud by imposing the a priori notion of survivorship bias makes no sense. Survivorship bias is an error only when some data points do not "survive", i.e. are excluded from counting. The presuppose the latter part without evidence.
> this is an assertion not an argument
What part of the statement "Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists." do you disagree with? You are starting from the assumption that fraud exists, then creating a fantasy explanation about who is committing it, without any factual basis at all.
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
> If I take a look, through a security lens, of the existing mail in process from registration to recording votes, it’s quite shocking.
What about it is "shocking"? Please be specific.
Please note that the alleged justification these changes is widespread voter fraud, which has never been shown to exist at a level even close to significant, despite many years of effort [1].
> the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud.
Or, ya know, make a persuasive case based on evidence of actual fraud and pass a bill in Congress, the way the country is supposed to work?
> This is a kind of comment I would expect on Reddit and not hn.
Yours is a low-effort riposte if ever there was one.
> If you took off your partisan hat, put on your red team hat
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
From my perspective this just looks like voter suppression. Your hypothetical edge cases operate at a scale that doesn't matter in the slightest, a fundamental rookie security mistake.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.
The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.
And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.
Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."
Fallacy of composition. It would be factual to say that the USPS is part of the federal government, but then the statement becomes completely irrelevant.
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.
Everyone wants a winner on the day, and if the votes are pushed back it goes into 'hanging chad' time, which some appointed judge can just decide if the votes are included / the winner.
I'd wager most of us are OK with it taking a few days. There's a (relative) few weirdos that get upset if they see the numbers change as votes continue to be tallied.
No, the verification they're doing is on the sending side, not receiving. The state sends people ballots, the USPS intercepts them and sends them back to the state if they find an issue.
IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late
They only tested 400 out of 10,000, so there’s every chance when it goes back there’ll be another reason to reject it. You’re also assuming that the government’s data is accurate and the rejections are not disingenuous. If the ballots were actually accurate the state now needs to go through the process of proving that particular voter is eligible. Do state elections departments have the time and manpower to do all of that for however many get rejected? The goal is clearly to waste as much time as possible so the ballots don’t arrive on time.
> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail
Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.
Don’t you guys have many more referendums than other countries by nature of your direct democracy? At that point streamlining the process becomes crucial.
Yes, that's true, and we go to the polls on average four to five times per year. Indeed, this leads to making the process lean and efficient. However, this trusted process too is under pressure to change. Recently, voting via internet has been discussed, which could potentially undermine its trustworthiness.
Voting by mail is, in the absolute, a bad idea, not because of fraud but because it enables vote buying: you can show someone who you are voting for, and thus receive a bribe for it. The "normal" way of voting in a booth removes that verification step and makes vote buying a fool's errand.
Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.
Have anonymized, legally binding election programs. The voter gets two randomly selected programs. Basically bubble sort but with up and down vote counters.
You spend 30 minutes in the boot before voting and get paid for your time.
Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy, unless the system has been tampered with, which you could also do with illegal cameras at in-person voting etc. Anonymous envelope-within-envelope is a pretty standard way to keep secrecy, and many states do it, like mine.
Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.
If a name and the address associated 'votes', how long before that initial vote is noted in the system? I'm assuming a situation in which there's fake slips out there, or a subsequent digital vote comes in. When is the discrepancy flagged?
Voting doesn't work in a low-trust society.
You can't trust the custodian of the digital system who tallies the votes. The problem is intractable.
The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are firmly against this.
And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged. Nobody with power is asking for any audit...
The entire state of Oregon has done vote-by-mail for the past ~30 years and it seems to have gone fine for them for decades. Then again, their voting by mail wasn't being challenged by an actively hostile Federal government for much of that time.
No, Election Day is not a paid holiday, or even a recognized holiday. Public schools are generally out (at least the ones used as voting precints) but folks have work, and typically most "in person" votes are cast after 5pm (after folks traditionally leave work).
Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades. It's remarkably secure and quite auditable. The issue the right has with it is that the folks that vote by mail (the military notwithstanding) are typically democrats.
It is not a paid holiday. It isn't an unpaid holiday either. And if you work a minimum wage job, you probably need to work as many hours as you can. And if you don't show up to work on Tuesday, don't bother showing up on Wednesday because you don't have that job anymore.
This is absolutely discriminatory against the poor. That's why the republicans fight for these types of restrictions and democrats fight against them.
We have a designated Election Day. It is (as you correctly imply) not a federal holiday. My own perspective is that that is indeed clearly discriminatory, and that some people like it that way.
While I think that making it a national holiday would be a good idea because it would maximize the number of eligible voters, it would still disenfranchise some people. There are jobs that have to be done 24/7/365 (mostly safety jobs), therefor there will be someone who is stuck at work that day. There are people who work at power companies on Christmas Day just to make sure the lights on Christmas trees light up.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast)
2016 0.000089%
2018 0.000024%
2020 0.000051%
2022 0.000010%
Average 0.000043%
That's just fear mongering. Absentee voting by mail has been a thing for centuries. Attempting to limit it to people who are unable to vote in person doesn't do anything to make it more secure, and is a very weak control. It's not like they're going to check up on every single person who claims to have a specific reason they can't get to the polls. Beyond that, no-excuse absentee ballots have been a thing in many states for decades. Three states have been mailing absentee ballots to every voter automatically for a decade or more. Despite this long history, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems resulting from it.
Agreed. I can't even recall any point in my life when an allegation of fraud was made before Trump came on the scene. I've seen requests for recounts when the margins were close, but never an allegation of malicious intent.
Over and over and over and over again it has been shown that there is no meaningful voter fraud whatsoever. Stop watching Fox News or as I see below reading yahoo news lol
Right, except voter fraud is a true thing. That you don't know that isn't my problem as such, but it will become one for the entire country because of people like you.
Why are you lying about what the other person said? They said "no meaningful fraud" as in there's not an amount of fraud that can actually change the results.
>Why are you lying about what the other person said?
Why do you see the truth as a lie?
>They said "no meaningful fraud" as in there's not an amount of fraud that can actually change the results.
Except there is plenty of evidence across the world for over twenty years of "meaningful fraud that could change election results" happening. Heck, it actually goes all the way back to the Civil War and while history records Lincoln being elected, the cheating was such his election almost wasn't.
It's actually very specific. Look up the previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau and you will see exactly what I mean and why I've said it the way I've said it.
"Specific" would involve some sort of detail about what these abuses were, or when they happened, or something beyond just "previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau."
The fun thing about being extremely vague is that it's inherently unsearchable. I can do a search and find reports of USPIS abuses, but I have no idea if they're the ones you're referring to or not, because you didn't say what you were referring to. And I'm not about to spend a bunch of time trying to work out which ones you meant and how they might connect to voting by mail when you can't be bothered to give even the slightest bit of information.
We don't have holidays here, but employers are required to provide us with a certain amount of consecutive free hours (which specific number I can't remember) inside voting hours.
That’s fine, except for places in the US (particularly poor urban areas) where you have to wait in line for hours and hours to vote - it would need to accommodate for that
The fact it takes hours upon hours is a problem in an of itself, it probably acts as a deterrent to vote for many. I just checked, in Canada it's 3 mandatory consecutive hours without docking pay or other penalities.
1. Why send ballots until verified.
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
> Our elections are beyond broken and untrustworthy.
You assert this without evidence. People have spent years looking for evidence of widespread voter fraud without success [1].
> voting should have a barrier to entry. Your freedoms are important - people died for them.
That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights? They added a "barrier to entry" for voting after the civil war and it didn't go so well. [2]
Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s. Defcon famously has its voting village, where hackers hack voting machines via numerous means. If you think this isn't happening (or at least being attempted) in reality (by either party, and/or outside countries) you are naive.
> That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights?
Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself, and it is a VERY difficult and bloody ordeal that can be lost extremely quickly if not protected. (See all non-free countries, or even parts of Europe where you can now be jailed for making certain comments online.)
I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests" we implemented during Jim Crow, but if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
> I mean, there are plenty of instances if you are willing to look
I am willing to look and I see exactly zero cases of widespread, organized, mail ballot voting by non-citizens of the type that Republicans say is widespread, despite lack of evidence. What I do see is low-level cases of some guy filling out two voter registration forms in an effort to win a local election and getting caught immediately, which are cases that Republican proposals would do nothing to prevent.
> Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s
Curiously, this case was not in the list of fraud cases that you yourself provided.
> Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself,
That's not what I asked. Do you have to show your ID before you are allowed to use your freedom of speech? No you don't. Rights don't have a barrier to entry: they are available to everyone.
> if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
Again, that's not how rights work. The Bill of Rights doesn't say "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... unless the person in question gives vibes suggesting that they don't love the the US of A, go America." You can vehemently disagree with your country and still get rights, including the right to vote.
> I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests"
The Republican proposal under question specifically requires people to get a government issued ID that proves citizenship, while ~10% [1] of the US population lacks such ID. That sure sounds like a barrier of entry designed to exclude classes of "undesirable" people.
Right, like you should have to wait in line for a huge amount of time. People hate holidays and time off work otherwise we should do like a national holiday but oh wait the point is the barrier right? We need to close as many polling places as possible and lets make it so the words are extremely tiny and only printed in latin and at alternating angles, cause if its easy to read then people might be able to express their opinions which we worked so hard to make sure people could buy, people shouldn’t be represented, because of your freedoms
Agree with the idea that maybe, in a nation of brainwashed and stupid people who can't trust each other, we need paper ballots to make things easy to understand.
I disagree that people only vote by mail due to laziness or that the administration is taking away voting rights for the good of democracy.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
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